Chinese Art: Cinnabar Lacquer Dish Yuan Dynasty

Chinese Works of Art
SALE N08171 LOT 74
SESSION 1 | 30 Mar 06 10:15 AM.
New York
A RARE CINNABAR LACQUER DISH
YUAN DYNASTY
150,000—200,000 USD
Lot Sold. Hammer Price with Buyer's Premium: 180,000 USD
MEASUREMENTS
measurements note
13 1/2 in., 34.3 cm
DESCRIPTION
of shallow circular form resting on a short footring, the interior finely and deeply carved through the red lacquer with a pair of confronting songbirds with elegant outstretched wings and long tail plumage curling to conform to the shape of the dish, gently incised with delicate lines to depict their feathery bodies, amdist a dense profusion of musk mallow flowers and leaves, the details picked out and carved in varying levels of depth to give a three-dimensional effect, all bound within a thick rim, the underside of the rim encircled by a guri scroll carved through to reveal alternating layers of black lacquer, the base lacquered black, Japanese wood box
CATALOGUE NOTE
Designs of paired birds surrounded by lush flowers were particularly popular for carved lacquerware in the Yuan dynasty, although they can be traced back to beginnings in the Southern Song. The musk mallow shown on the present dish was, however, rarely depicted, more common being camellia, peony and lotus.

A very similar dish in the Honolulu Academy of Arts, is illustrated in Sir Harry Garner, Chinese Lacquer, London, 1979, pl.43; another was included in the exhibition 2000 Years of Chinese Lacquer, Art Gallery, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 1993, cat.no.35; and a similar red lacquer dish, attributed to the Yuan or early Ming dynasty, from the Florence and Herbert Irving Collection, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, is published in James C.Y. Watt and Barbara Brennan Ford, East Asian Lacquer, New York, 1991, no.19 and illustrated on the cover.

A red dish carved with musk mallow only and lacking the birds, from the collection of Edward T. Chow, sold in our Hong Kong rooms, 3rd May 1994, lot 270, is published in Sotheby's: Thirty Years in Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 2003, pl.405.

A similar black lacquer dish, decorated with different birds among the related hollyhock flowers, in the National Museums of Scotland, Edinburgh, is illustrated in Hu Shih-chang, Chinese Lacquer, Edinburgh, 1998, pl.8; black lacquer dishes with long-tailed birds among camellias are in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, from the Irving Collection, see Watt and Ford, op.cit., no.20; and in Seattle, see Michael Knight, East Asian Lacquers in the Collection of the Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, 1992, pl.6; one was sold in our Hong Kong rooms, 27th April 2003, lot 290; and a red lacquer example with birds among camellias, in the Palace Museum, Beijing, is illustrated in Zhongguo qiqi quanji, vol.4, Fuzhou, 1998, pl.162.

This mature Yuan style, where the design is beautifully laid out and the carving very accomplished, developed from much simpler Song prototypes. To follow this development, it is interesting to compare several examples of Song dynasty lacquerware with bird-and-flower designs included in the exhibition The Colors and Forms of Song and Yuan China: Featuring Lacquerwares, Ceramics, and Metalwares, Nezu Institute of Fine Arts, Tokyo, 2004, cat.nos.83, 84, 89, 92, 118, and a more direct predecessor, attributed to the late Southern Song or Yuan period, no.86, as well as a Southern Song silver box with a related bird design, no.36.

For the identification of this flower as musk mallow see the woodblock print from a pharmaceutical handbook published in 1249, illustrated and discussed in Regina Krahl, 'Plant Motifs of Chinese Porcelain: Examples from the Topkapi Saray Identified through the Bencao Gangmu', Orientations, May 1987, p.55, fig.3, and as well as an illustration from a later handbook and a Yongle ewer with this design, p. 58, figs.16 and 18.

JBOC Note: The Yuan Dynasty was the Mongol Dynasty from 1279-1368 A.D.

I am not looking to buy or sell. I am reviewing this object to place it in context and to use it as a teaching aid.

Thanks and best wishes,

J. Barry O'Connell Jr.

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